Bright & Wize: Recent Episodes

Brize

Bright & Wize, a Brize podcast, is dedicated to demonstrating how soft skills, powered by self-awareness, are the key to career success, happiness, and mental well-being. Our guests share their career successes and failures to demonstrate how their commitment to strengthening their soft skills helps them successfully maneuver career challenges and work more productively. The host of Bright & Wize is Leslie Ferry, the founder of Brize, an app that helps individuals develop and strengthen their people skills to achieve their definition of career success. Visit https://brize.co to learn more.

Disclaimer: Apologies to non-sports fans, specifically non-hockey fans, for the analogy. It's just particularly fitting.
AI is already disrupting how we work. It will increase our productivity and change how we achieve our goals and responsibilities in profound ways. It is the latest evolution of the skills needed in the AI economy. Listen to hear how you can take advantage of this latest shift.

Strategic thinking, or being strategic, is often tossed around as a needed approach in the workplace. But what does it actually mean? Being strategic involves achieving short-term goals while keeping an eye on the future for potential opportunities or unforeseen consequences.

Listen to hear more.

In this year-end podcast series, Pamela Coleman-Davis, a Certified Career Coach and The Modern Leadership Design program developer, joins Leslie Ferry. And they explore 5 attributes of effective leadership.

In this first episode, they start by defining the broader definition of leadership, which encompasses those who want to take ownership of their career, so a self-leader, to those who wish to demonstrate leadership before getting the title.

They then move into the first attribute – Influences Others to Gain Cooperation.

For each attribute, Pam explains

What each means
Why it is important
Actions to take to strengthen them
And knowing if you are doing it correctly

The other attributes will follow in separate episodes and include:

Activates System 2 Critical Thinking for Problem-Solving
Over-Communicates to Avoid Ambiguity
Proactively Creates Culture
Empowers Other Through Continuous Learning

In the 5th and final episode, Leslie Ferry and Pamela Coleman-Davis discuss the leadership attribute: Empowers Others Through Continuous Learning.

In their wrap-up of the series, they share how these five attributes contribute to a leader's trustworthiness.

In this episode, Leslie Ferry and Pamela Coleman-Davis discuss the 4th of 5 effective leadership attributes: Proactively Creates Culture.

In this episode, Leslie Ferry and Pamela Coleman-Davis discuss the 3rd of 5 effective leadership attributes: Over-Communicates to Avoid Ambiguity.

In this episode, Leslie Ferry and Pamela Coleman-Davis discuss the 2nd of 5 effective leadership attributes: Activates System 2 Critical Thinking for Problem-Solving.

This episode series is the first of several year-end Bright & Wize weekly series. Here, Brize CEO & Bright & Wize host Leslie Ferry dives into performance measurement in the workplace. The reason she wanted to explore this topic is because once stated and understood, the performance measurement seems logical; some might even think, duh. But, the funny thing is they appear more subconscious and are not often explicitly stated in these ways, so she thought she’d explicitly say them.

This first episode looks at the transition from academia, where knowing the answer was the measure of good performance, into the workplace, where the measure of our performance differs.

The final topic of the Career Transitions and Performance Measurement series is leading others. It starts with two questions. Are you a manager or leader? How do you know? Listen to find out how to recognize your movement into the next career stage.

This Bright & Wize episode discusses how job performance measurements change when individuals start to manage others, whether as a team lead or direct report manager.

In this thought-provoking episode, we explore how the ever-evolving work landscape and our individual career journeys shape the essential skills needed for thriving in today's careers.

Leslie Ferry, the host and Brize CEO, kicks things off by delving into how technology’s relentless progress reshapes the essence of work. It is no longer just about cognitive skills; it’s about elevating our cognitive abilities, fostering collaboration, and cultivating a positive mindset.

She then sheds light on the job performance measurements shift as we progress through our careers.

These two factors have created the career profile she and her team at Brize have aptly coined “I3” (I cubed) – a career profile that blends Subject, Emotional, and Social Intelligence.

Listen to understand how these three pillars of intelligence converge to shape your path to success in the modern career landscape.

One of the most exciting aspects of work today is that we get to share our ideas for growth or solutions to problems. Work today is more ideation and less repetitive efforts. It is exciting to have the opportunity to positively impact our organization beyond our individual roles.

To do that, we need to influence others and persuade them to give our ideas a try. How do you do that?

Many of us avoid thinking about our actions or approaches to work for various reasons. In this Bright & Wize podcast episode, Leslie Ferry delves into why we don't do it. But more importantly, she discusses the benefits of self-reflection, how to overcome the obstacles that prevent us from doing it, and how to get started.

Listen to understand the research proof of 20% higher productivity with self-analysis to work better, not harder.

Hearing we can do a better job in some areas can be disappointing. But with feedback, we can speed our growth. Listen to hear how to accept this tremendous give gracefully. And how you can help your colleagues provide helpful insights. (They may be concerned they will hurt your feelings.)

Brize CEO and host of the Bright & Wize podcast Leslie Ferry recently presented at a virtual tech conference where she shared her thoughts on what it takes to have a successful career in today’s digitally transformed work environment.

She illustrates how repetitive job tasks have been automated (think Grammarly), and new job growth is in non-routine positions, which require employees to expand their current skills and mindsets. Leslie talks about how AI and digital transformation has created a new career success profile, which she refers to as I3, that integrates our natural intelligence, intention, and interaction.

Listen to hear what it means to work with intention and positive interaction and how to leverage your natural intelligence to do so. It starts with Leslie sharing, “The opportunity to work on meaningful projects, conceptualize and develop creative solutions to problems, or create new products or services no one else has imaged yet has never been greater. We all have the opportunity to impact our organization positively and accomplish personal satisfaction. It is an exciting time to be in the workforce.”

Mentors are a great source of guidance and advice on navigating our careers to realize our goals. They are generous with their time to share their experiences and lessons to help us accelerate our growth and avoid missteps. These exceptional connections start slowly and blossom into valued, long-term relationships.

Leslie talks with Scott Montgomery on this topic. They discuss the seek-out versus attract mentor approach, the mentee's and mentor's responsibilities, and the benefits they've experienced, thanks to their mentors

After just buying her first home with her new husband, Leslie, Bright & Wize host and Brize Founder, was laid off. With a higher mortgage on top of car payments and other financial responsibilities, to say the stress and anxiety she was experiencing was extreme is an understatement.

But thanks to a commitment to her career growth and development, Leslie was able to land a new job within just about a month. You never know where a focus on career wellness will lead, but it is always worth the investment.

Listen to hear how Leslie’s investment quickly led to an unexpected career opportunity, further supporting her goal of learning as much as possible about other functional areas.

It contributes to the great job performance opinion divide.It is not a new phenomenon, but its reasons are evolving. There is a great job performance opinion divide. Many individuals can overestimate how well they are performing at work. They may believe they are producing superior quality, but their manager disagrees. This Bright & Wize podcast episode explores why many of us think we're knocking it out of the park, on top of our game, or accomplishing great things when our manager or boss has a different opinion.

Professional athletes have performance coaches. So should corporate professionals. Coaches guide a self-discovery process, helping us understand how we show up for work and growth opportunities that lead to stronger job performance with less stress and anxiety.

In this Bright & Wize episode, Scott Montgomery joins Leslie again to share how career performance coaches significantly changed their careers and led to their passion for helping others experience the same benefits.

As they start, Scott clarifies the difference between a coach, mentor, and advisor. They then go on to discuss the benefits and some pitfalls of each.

Talking about pain and healing in the workplace may seem out-of-place. But that is the point, to shift our thinking about how we think about our pain (stress, anxiety, hurt) at work to clarify how we can address and manage it.

In this episode, Dani Doucette, Modern Healing Artist at Healeology, joins Leslie to talk about pain and healing in the workplace. Dani shares his views on this unconventional but highly effective approach to work.

The evolution of how we show up for work has transitioned from showing no emotions to the opportunity to bring our whole selves. When we do, we demonstrate vulnerability, which is positive. But it also brings the chance of feeling hurt, aggrieved, or harmed.

In this episode, you’ll hear how healing, pain, and forgiveness lead to greater individual and organizational productivity. And with that higher quality output comes lower work-related stress and anxiety.

What you’ll hear:

How to categorize pain (stress, anxiety, hurt, etc.)
How to identify the true source of pain
How to correct misunderstandings

Scott Montgomery, Chief Customer Officer at Worldgate, certified Leadership Coach, and author of a new book, How Did You Get Here? Lessons of Unconventional Success joins Leslie again to discuss how setting goals contribute to attaining our personal definition of success and the need to establish positive habits to support their achievement.

Have you heard about the new trend at work, quiet quitting? If you are not up to date on this latest viral trend, quiet quitting is not about leaving a job but a process of starting to do the minimum amount of work possible while keeping a job.

Like most human-related topics, this one is complicated and can have long-term negative consequences if we do not carefully consider why we might opt to take this approach to work.

We need to remember that Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

In this episode, Leslie explores the longer-term impacts of deciding to practice quiet quitting. She also shares a personal story about how to reframe the "Above and Beyond" mentality, which led her to accept a job with an almost 50% pay cut.

We all want to understand how to measure our value at work. Pamela Coleman-Davis provides guidance on how to self-evaluate our contributions and actions to increase the value we provide to our organization.

Now that we know The Formula For Providing Value at work, it is time to dissect what each means. Pamela Coleman-Davis does just that in this episode.

If you want to Get A Head at Work you need to provide value to your organization. Individuals who do so are seen as essential or indispensable. But to be seen as valuable does not mean:

Doing our Job Description Responsibilities
Reacting to Requests
Being Busy, Doing Stuff
Attending Meetings

At least not in the way we typically think of these actions.

The formula for providing value is:

Knowledge + How We Work + How We Relate

Pamela Coleman-Davis joins Leslie again to explain what this all means and how we can measure ourselves throughout 3-episodes. In this episode, Leslie outlines the formula components and skills contributing to each.

Storytelling is a powerful tool for understanding many aspects of life, including the essential work skills that power our best performance. This week’s guest, Scott Montgomery, does just that by sharing an incredibly disappointing experience that led to future, incredible experiences. The ingredient that turned the situation around? He decided to take a positive, learning mindset versus a victim, negative one. His story is an excellent example of how we can all take control of our destiny and achieve our life goals.

While building his IT consulting firm, Worldgate, Scott discovered his passion for helping individuals foster a continuous learner mindset to find their best selves. He obtained an ICF-ACC leadership coach certification to ensure he successfully develops and mentees his employees and others. He now serves as a strategic advisor on Brize’s board and is the author of the upcoming book, How Did You Get Here? Lessons of Unconventional Success, both of which enable him to achieve his goal of helping individuals perform at their best and live their happiest lives.

In this episode, Brize's founder, Leslie Ferry, reflects on how academic success differs fairly significantly from the approach to performing well in our jobs. Her unique analysis stems from not only her career and education but from her recent years instructing a strategic marketing class in a master's program. Observing her students heightened her awareness of just how differently success is fueled between the two stages of our lives.

Leslie's perspective is helpful to individuals who entered the workforce in the last several years and those who manage individuals who entered the workforce in the last five to seven years.

Knowing our work style and that of your coworkers is a secret ingredient to working efficiently, influencing others, performing at your best, and lower work-related stress and anxiety. This super-power knowledge eliminates misunderstanding and misinterpretations of behaviors. It helps us determine how to best work with others to achieve our goals and influences progress.

Listen to hear more about the four high-level work styles and discover your own.

In this final episode on stress, Pamela Coleman—Davis shares with Leslie Ferry how we can effectively manage our stress to stay at the positive, motivational level.

In this episode, Pamela Coleman-Davis and Leslie Ferry dig deep into the actual sources of stress, which go beyond having too much to do, too few resources, and unrealistic deadlines. Although, these can all be factors of stress. Listen to identify what might be your current core source of stress.

This episode is part 1 of 3 on the topic of stress. Pamela Coleman-Davis, a Leadership Coach, joins Leslie to explore this ever-present topic.

We all experience stress -- there is no escaping it, but we can successfully manage it. But before Leslie and Pam jump to the punchline, they define what stress is compared to burnout in this first chat. They also explain how to recognize where we fall on the stress spectrum from positive, motivational stress to burnout and what lies in between.

stress #stressmanagement #careersuccess #selfawareness

The stages along the path to understanding, defining, and then taking actions to accomplish our “why” vary for each individual. And this podcast has advice for everyone, whether you already know your “why” or if you are still defining it.

Leslie is joined by Pamela (Pam) Coleman-Davis, a 25+ year corporate veteran who has successfully navigated extraordinary change throughout her career and is now sharing her experience and knowledge as a Leadership Coach. Pam and Leslie explore the power of intentionally defining our “Why” in life and at work.

Some of what you’ll hear:

Pam has not always known her way. But she focused on learning what she is good at and what she enjoys and doesn’t, which led to better career decisions in her pursuit to define her “why.”
Our “why” doesn’t need to be groundbreaking; it just needs to reflect your values.
Actions displayed by individuals who know their why can lead to unexpected opportunities.

From wanting to make more money to a desire to learn through more challenging responsibilities to balancing work and personal responsibilities, we are motivated to take actions that will get us there when we understand what we want to accomplish - purposeful actions.

You can learn more about Pam’s experience and approach to helping her clients at https://www.colemandavis.coach/.

knowyourwhy #careergrowth #careersuccess #careercoaching

Congratulations on your new job! You are undoubtedly feeling a lot of emotions, possibly a little anxiety about the unknown. But hopefully, excitement for new possibilities and a heightened desire to have a positive impact. Kick-start your positive impact by ensuring the strength of your Active Listening, Building Relations, and Collaboration skills.

In Building Relationships, you will hear about the 4 primary work styles. To work collaboratively with all of our co-workers, we need to understand the uniqueness of each. You’ll hear how we can misunderstand the behaviors or actions of our colleagues when we are unaware of their work style, which leads to unnecessary stress and anxiety.

Know your work style and then actively listen and observe your co-workers to identify theirs.

Harmonizer
Introspective
Energizer
Captain

careersuccess #activelistening #listening #workrelationships #collaboration #brize #bebrize

As we all know, humans are unique and complicated. We have individual talents, different stressors, competing personal and work responsibilities, personal traits, different approaches to work, and more. To be successful at work, we need to know how to navigate the uniqueness of our colleagues to ensure we work effectively together.

To build strong, collaborative relationships from the start, we need to understand different work styles and human traits, our organization’s functional area responsibilities, and natural cross-department tensions. We also need to be masterful at conducting relationship check-ins to ensure they stay on track. And if we disagree with a colleague, we need to take the initiative and have a conversation to get the relationship back on track quickly.

Last season on Bright & Wize, Dr. Nikki Blacksmith and Dr. Mo McCusker explained that confidence is a mindset that emerges from the highly interrelated human elements of neuroticism, self-efficacy, locus of control, and self-esteem. This episode revisits these personal elements that influence our confidence and then explores the soft skills that are foundational to building stronger self-confidence. These skills are critical thinking, problem-solving, communicating effectively, and knowing our strengths and weaknesses.

Critical Thinking meets the esteem element of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because it powers accomplishing things or goals. Critical thinking leads to sounder decision-making and more successful outcomes. We more clearly see our value from these satisfying outcomes, increasing our self-esteem or self-worth.
Problem-solving requires strong cause and effect analysis powered by critical thinking. A systematic, analytical approach to solving problems leads to the creation of solutions that address the core cause of the problem. With more successful results, we believe we can accomplish more ambitious goals. Which improves our self-efficacy and locus of control.
Communicating effectively, confidently. After building stronger cause and effect and new data analysis approaches, it is time to present our opinions, ideas, or recommendations confidently. Effective communicators structure their conversations so that they are easy for their listeners to understand. With greater understanding comes higher recognition of our abilities by our co-workers, fueling greater self-worth.
Strengths and weaknesses. Confident individuals recognize they are not experts at everything. They know what they do well and what they do not. They know asking for help is a strength in itself, and it leads to greater fulfillment and less disappointment, increasing their self-esteem or self-worth.

Being an effective communicator is a given for successful Salespeople. And, another obvious skill is active listening, but the key to active listening is being masterful at the listening part versus waiting for your turn to talk. You can't hold on to what you want to say but rather need to listen to respond with relatable information. If your responses are not aligned with what a prospect is saying they need, you risk demonstrating a lack of understanding. The other skill that powers this knowledge is empathetic concern.

Listen to this bonus episode of Bright & Wize if you are interested in understanding how Active Listening, Empathetic Concern, and Effective Communication integrate to help improve closed sales rates.

Skills Covered:

Active Listening
Empathetic Concern
Effective Communication

listening #activelistening #empathy #empatheticconcern #communication #effectivecommunicaion #careersuccess #brize #bebrize

Strategic thinking is an involved process that leverages several soft skills. It starts by seeking understanding (Active Listening & Intellectual Humility) and focused, effortful thinking where reason dominates (Critical Thinking), which is the opposite of our typical every day, automatic thinking. And it requires foresight, which is the ability to identify reactions four, five, or six steps beyond an initial action (Problem-Solving).

Being a strategic thinker is essential at work today – it is one of the most highly sought-after skills by employers. It leads to creative, innovative, breakthrough ideas that elevate our company's customer experience, eliminate problems customers face, or introduce processes that make a company run more efficiently.

When we demonstrate strategic thinking and sound decision-making at work, it can lead to new work opportunities. It also leads to lower stress and anxiety because it eliminates the need to re-work some project or task and speeds up completing our responsibilities.

This bonus episode explores how to achieve the career goal of communicating more effectively. The unexpected big discovery of this topic is that communicating well is a process that starts before we say anything.

The soft skills needed to communicate so others understand us are:

Critical thinking
Empathy, and specifically Empathetic Concern
Building Strong Work Relationships
Methodical preparation – and no conversation is too small to prepare for

The final step is critical to bringing together the data and knowledge we gain through the prior three skills so that you can answer the questions "what, so what, and why" when conveying your thoughts or ideas.

If your goal is to communicate more effectively, this podcast will help reveal the skills needed to achieve it.

#criticalthinking #empathy #empatheticconcern #workrelationships #careersuccess #brize #bebrize

This is the first in a series of Bonus Bright & Wize podcasts dedicated to defining and explaining the skills that lead to achieving specific career goals.

This episode explores how to Get a Promotion or More Challenging Responsibilities.

You will hear that ambition and a desire to achieve more are essential motivations for career success. And, you'll also learn that the critical element to career growth is exceeding the expectations of our co-workers. To do this, we need to produce high-quality work, show initiative, and demonstrate strategic thinking & sound decision-making.

The skills that fuel these attributes are:

Active Listening
Intellectual Humility
Critical Thinking
Problem-Solving
And then Taking Initiative

If your aim is a promotion or more challenging responsibilities at work this year, this podcast will help you define a to path to achieve it.

strategicthinking #decisionmaking #listening #humility #criticalthinking #problemsolving #softskills #initiative #careersuccess #brize #bebrize

There is a growing recognition that self-awareness is the secret to career success, happiness, and mental well-being. But the big challenge is knowing how to develop it. On this episode, Leslie shares information from the psychologists and career coaches who developed the educational content for Brize, including:

How self-awareness powers career mental well-being
The broader details of what it means to be self-aware
How Brize’s approach eases the overwhelming feeling of knowing how to develop self-awareness and soft skills

Brize users:

Learn how to achieve their career goals
Develop strong soft skills and deeper self-awareness through work-related exercises
Strengthen their mental health and well-being

This week, we wrap up our conversation with Dr. Mo McCusker and Dr. Nikki Blacksmith, who share a secret to building self-awareness and succeeding at work. This episode may be short, but it is powerful.

To build self-awareness, you’ll hear that we need to seek knowledge of self, others, and us and what our emotions tell us.

#selfawareness #curiousity #careersuccess

This Bright & Wize episode with guests Dr. Mo McCusker and Dr. Nikki Blacksmith is jammed packed with insights and invaluable advice on how to embrace mistakes and failures versus fearing them.

As Nikki shares, a fear of failure is rooted in fear of looking foolish and how others will perceive us. She goes on to share that success is less about the mistake but rather how we handle it. When we take responsibility for our actions that might feel like a failure to us, others are more forgiving and will pitch in to help us fix it if needed. Mo shares that failure is a rite of passage in the start-up space and that teammates lift each other in work environments that accept mistakes will happen.

Listen to hear how mistakes and failures lead to success, why it is a mistake not to accept responsibility for our errors, and sage advice on steps to take to minimize the impact of our mistakes.

And you’ll want to hear the story Nikki shares about the brave professor who tweeted their CV, but it only included their failures.

Another resource on this topic is the Brize app. It includes information on how to graciously accept responsibility for a mistake and then move on in the Intellectual Humility module. It also includes exercises to train our brains to look for the learnings in our failures.

selfawareness #fearoffailure #softskills #humility

Over the last two weeks, Dr. Nikki Blacksmith and Dr. Mo McCusker have explained self-awareness, illustrated its value through the positive outcomes it produces, and guided us on how to develop this invaluable knowledge. This week Leslie shifts the focus of her discussion with Mo and Nikki to the barriers we can create to gaining greater self-awareness and performing at our best.

The first barrier they explore together is confidence and how low confidence can lead to self-handicapping or self-sabotaging behaviors. Subconsciously, we can create obstacles to our belief that we can succeed and achieve our goals.

confidence #softskills #careersuccess #impostersyndrome #selfconfidence #selfesteem

This week Leslie is back with Dr. Nikki Blacksmith and Dr. Mo McCusker, continuing their discussion on the importance of self-awareness at work. In this episode, Nikki & Mo share guidance on how to tackle building greater self-awareness. A couple of key takeaways is that self-awareness is not a one-and-done process; we are continuously evolving and truly developing self-awareness requires more than understanding ourselves and ourselves in relation to others. Listen to learn the "and then...."

The process of building greater self-awareness includes:

Assessing our current abilities, values, and aspirations
Reflecting on our actions, behaviors, skills, and output
Defining and developing any needed changes

selfawareness #softskills #careererperformance

This episode’s title is a declaration of why Leslie Ferry created the Bright & Wize podcast and the Brize app. Both aim to raise personal and other self-awareness to fuel career empowerment and success.

Dr. Tasha Eurich coined self-awareness as the “meta-skill of the 21st century.” Dr. Nikki Blacksmith and Dr. Mo McCusker embody this belief and have dedicated their learning, research, and careers to empowering individual and team success through greater self-awareness and self-awareness in relation to others.

This is the first in several episodes where Nikki & Mo will share their expertise on the topics of:

Self-awareness. What it is and how it extends to learning about our colleagues at work.
How it drives positive outcomes at work (and in life).
How soft skills are critical to strengthening self-awareness.
And finally, unknown barriers we all create to becoming self-aware and achieving our goals.

careersuccess #selfawareness #softskills

About mid-way through next season, which will start next week, we will explore the topic of different work styles. Our listeners will learn how unique approaches to work can be misinterpreted. For example, someone may be highly conflict adverse whose behavior may be interpreted as disinterested or lazy because they seem to be attempting to avoid work. When in reality, they will avoid conflict at all costs. Understanding our colleagues' unique work approaches, characteristics, or traits are key data points that enable us to build strong, trusting working relationships.

But before we get to that episode this week, we are sharing a replay of one of Leslie Ferry's (Brize founder and host of Bright & Wize) work experiences that demonstrate the benefits and importance of investing time to build strong work relationships.

teamwork #collaboration #buildworkrelationships

We have some exciting guests planned for season 3, which starts soon. In the meantime, we wanted to share some of our most actionable podcasts from Season 2, where Brize founder Leslie Ferry explores 3 behaviors a growing number of employees are demonstrating that might be negatively impacting career productivity and growth. Leslie describes each behavior, shares how it is frustrating others, and provides a way to determine if you exhibit these behaviors. And then you'll hear actions you can take to adjust them.

careergrowth #selfawareness #intentionalthinking #criticalthinking #intellectualhumility

We don’t walk around with a mirror at work, where we can watch ourselves to ensure our behaviors, body language, tone of voice, and actions demonstrate ourselves as we intend. Our intentions are misinterpreted by our co-workers more often than we realize.

One of the leading misinterpreted behaviors is how we share our opinions. We have invested time and energy to become subject matter experts. When we share our expert opinions, we express them with great confidence. We can sometimes be so sure in our opinions that we can appear to ignore or dismiss counter facts shared by others.

This extreme confidence can be interpreted as proving our intelligence, arrogance, or a need to be right.

When we subconsciously or consciously need to be right, we do not think objectively and miss important information that impacts our thoughts, ideas, and proposed strategies. This behavior frustrates others because, besides the lack of making others feel valued, we can miss information that might be critical to supporting our opinions and ideas for overcoming a problem and getting closer to the best solution. This need to demonstrate our intellect or to be right stalls progress for all.

In this potentially tricky topic podcast, we share ways to learn if you might be exhibiting this behavior and steps to take to change it.

This is the 2nd in a 3-part series of podcasts dedicated to exploring seemingly innocent behaviors that are frustrating managers and can stall an individual’s growth at work.

This week we tackle the topic of the rapid responses approach to work, with a stronger focus on getting something done versus producing high-quality work.

At its core, this behavior is frustrating others because it stalls progress.

In this podcast, Leslie revisits her conversation with Dr. Saundra Schrock to link our brain’s activities (default, automatic thinking) and prior experiences that lead us to respond quickly versus intentional, strategic thinking.

Key topics covered include:

Few to no answers to questions or problems at work have automatic answers.
How automatic thinking leads to mistakes, lapses in judgment, & negative results.
Developing foresight as the antidote to automatic thinking.

Leslie shares a couple of exercises that help individuals measure their intentional thinking and steps to strengthen it.

#careersuccess #strategicthinking #intentionalthinking

This week we explore the frustrations being felt on both sides of the manager / employee work equation.

Employees become frustrated when they feel their manager hasn’t provided clear direction on how to move forward with a project or task.

Managers are increasingly frustrated by the evolution of new employee approaches to work.

In the first of a 3-part series, we aim to reveal behaviors individuals may be unknowing exhibiting that are frustrating their managers and creating barriers to their career growth and development. For managers, we unearth the sources of these behaviors to help them better guide their team members to achieving their responsibilities and goals.

In this episode, we explore asking questions, an innocuous, even helpful approach to work that drives some managers crazy.

In this week’s Bright & Wize podcast, Brize’s founder and CEO, Leslie Ferry, shares a personal experience of how strong soft skills led a Marketing Manager to offer Leslie, an Accountant, a position in Marketing. Leslie had not even taken a marketing class as an undergrad. So this was certainly a significant career change she could never have imagined as a 17-year old when she decided her vocation.

This story is about the unsung heroes and power of strategic thinking, collaborative behaviors, and positive mindsets and how they can bring about exciting opportunities and positive unintended consequences at work.

Today’s Bright & Wize guest is Dr. Saundra Schrock. Dr. Schrock brings a unique and far-reaching perspective to the topics of career growth, development, and success. For almost 35-years, Saundra was in the financial services industry, beginning her career as a bank teller and rising through the ranks to her role as Executive Vice President at J.P. Morgan Chase. Saundra shares how it was this last role that led her to develop a deep practice in mindfulness. The life-changing impact of her practice then led to Saundra founding a successful mindfulness development company and completing her Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Our conversation covers topics ranging from:

The critical skills required in our new world of work, which are Collaboration, Communication, and Creation.
How fear of failure is a misguided belief that we can all overcome by quieting our inner critic. And Dr. Schrock shares an excellent exercise to silence that deflating voice.
To an exercise that aids in graciously accepting feedback, even if unkind, to overcome missteps and grow and develop in our careers.
How Saundra survived a severe bout of COVID-19, which led her to write a book during the pandemic, Thriving in a Global Pandemic and Beyond: More Than 100 Real-Life Lessons, which you can purchase at:https://store.bookbaby.com/book/Thriving-in-a-Global-Pandemic-and-Beyond

emotionalintelligence #careersuccess #confidence #feedback

This week's Bright & Wize guest is Latané Conant, the Chief Market Officer of 6sense. During our conversation, Latane shares how developing confidence at a young age has steered her approach to work, how taking initiative and sweating the small stuff is just her MO. And when you listen closely, you'll hear Latane talk about how she now innately goes about problem-solving to remove barriers to her teams', company, and self-success. And that is how she looks at success. She provides what her team needs and then what her company needs. And with that emphasis, she also succeeds, without her success being her primary focus.

Latane also shares how her parents' high expectations were a gift that fuels her ability to push adversity aside and achieve her goals.

The emotional intelligence work skills we talk about in this episode include:

Empathy
Initiative
Critical thinking
Problem-solving
Confidence

6sense is a California-based SaaS, or software-as-a service company that is leading the RevTech Revolution with their #1 Account Engagement Platform. 6sense leverages artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning to increase the success of a company’s entire revenue generation team, not just those with the word Sales in their title.

In this episode, Leslie Ferry explains how emotional intelligence (EQ) is essential to achieve our career goals. She links EQ and career goals with a specific example: getting a promotion because of a desire for more meaningful responsibilities or contributing to more purposeful projects. Leslie then tells how a particular work experience led to her getting tapped to lead a strategic, customer integration task force, not once but twice, following acquisitions by two of her employers.

The emotional intelligence cognitive skills Leslie highlights in this episode are:

Active Listening
Critical Thinking
Problem-Solving
Initiative

Brigitte Deel has already developed impressive self-awareness at 24-years of age. Brie attributes the early start of her personal awareness journey to being a student-athlete at Highpoint University.

As she transitioned from academia to the start of her career in 2020, she brought with her excellent time management and prioritization skills. After just 6-months as a Sale Development Representative with Salesforce, she has discovered a need to strengthen her active listening skills further.

Brie and I discuss:
• Managing competing responsibilities
• Delivering on your commitments to others
• The benefits of being coachable and accepting feedback as the gift it is
• The benefits of being open to diverse ideas
• And her discovery of the importance of active listening

This week, Sarah Smith joins Leslie to talk about her journey from Air Force brat to becoming an Episcopal Priest at St Andrew’s On-the-Sound in Wilmington, North Carolina --- via an unconventional route.

Sarah’s journey includes a personally described moral crisis, which called on her to evaluate her core values as a young 20-year old. From there, you’ll hear Sarah share a series of life experiences, twists and turns that climaxed in her coined “quarterly life crisis,” which led her to Christian Education and the Ministry.

I came away from our conversation with an even deeper respect for Sarah on many levels, especially her abundance of confidence and humility. She has an enviable balance of self-respect and respect for others.

Just some of the topics from our thought-provoking conversation include:

• No one is one dimensional, and our skill-set is not always our vocation
• Sarah’s personal values of accountability, responsibility, & gratitude
• Our weaknesses are our strengths misused
• How our values and behaviors are interrelated
• Embracing what is a perceived failure as a growth opportunity
• Strengthening leadership skills to include leading through change
• And much more

We close our conversation by discussing how this year has been a uniquely humanizing experience. Behind every topic we as a society classify as an issue are people, human beings with real wants and needs. Sarah and I are like-minded in that we both hope this is a reckoning we all can remember and carry forward as we get through the year that is 2020 together.

In this episode of Bright & Wize, we hear another personal experience from Leslie. She shares how a failed work experience turned into a significant learning opportunity to develop critical thinking. You will hear her story and how she has benefited from this momentary feeling of failure.

The emotional intelligence skill discussed in this episode --- Critical Thinking (to state the obvious.)

..our strong, trusting work relationship. Leslie shares an illustrative story to talk about the importance of investing in building relationships beyond work interactions with our colleagues. Hear why it matters and how it lowers stress & anxiety.

The emotional intelligence skills shared in this episode include:

Trust
Investing in Building Relationships
Confidence

In this episode of the Bright & Wize podcast, Leslie talks with one of her dearest friends, Victoria Parks. Victoria is a highly self-aware wife and mother of a 18-year old son. It is Victoria’s confidence that Leslie believes will appeal to you, given we all can be inflicted with imposter syndrome.

Leslie and Victoria discuss how, if someone entrusts you with a task or responsibility, they are expressing their confidence in you, so we need to embrace that belief and then go figure out how to get the job done. We need to embrace that confidence and then hold ourselves accountable to deliver on this belief by others.

Victoria shares how she has developed a strength of intuition, her belief that self-talk should be self-respect, and one of her weaknesses of having a bit of a temper.

The emotional intelligence (EQ) skills Leslie & Victoria discuss include:
Confidence
Intuition
Critical Thinking
& Optimism — although not explicitly stated, so listen closely

In the first Bright & Wize episode, our founder, Leslie Ferry, kicks things off by sharing the unique characteristics that she had discovered through her continuous self-awareness learning journey.

Leslie strongly believes that it is even more important to deeply understand our weaknesses to succeed at work. In this episode, Leslie shares some of her shortcomings to demonstrate the power of being vulnerable. She decided to share this view because when we know our weaknesses, we know when we don't know how to do something, and we need help to achieve a goal.

The Emotional Intelligence skills and characteristic Leslie shares include:

Loyalty
Trust
Self-accountability